Is Victorian Psychiatry Planning To Use Children Under 16 as Guinea Pigs by Allowing Them to Consent To Experimental Psychosurgery in the New Mental Health Act ?

Illegal for mental illness in NSW and the NT, Victorian psychiatrists want to be able to cut into the brains of children of any age and perform deep brain stimulation (DBS), psychiatry’s new experimental psychosurgery. DBS is not approved for mental illness in Australia and involves inserting electrodes deep into the brain through which an electrical current is sent from a pacemaker device implanted in the chest. It is the ultimate in an Orwellian future of thought control, in a profession with a very poor history of abuse, deadly experimentation and their own pronouncements that they do not know in fact what causes mental illness and have no cures.

If the new Victorian Mental Health Act, currently before Parliament is passed, children of any age could consent to this experimental treatment. The bill gives psychiatrists the right to determine if a child has the “capacity to give informed consent” to psychosurgery, without parental consent at any stage of the process including at a Tribunal who makes the final decision for treatment. This is a parent’s worst nightmare – psychiatry appropriating their child and performing radical brain operations under the guise of controlling behaviour.

Deep Brain Stimulation can cause memory loss, stroke, irreversible brain damage, bleeding in the brain and post-operative death. Later on, if radiology personnel and physicians forget there are electrodes in the brain, and use any of three specific types of equipment to conduct a MRI (body scan), it can cause coma, permanent neurological impairment and death. The cost of the pacemaker device alone is around $16,000, with the total cost being around $70,000.

DBS is currently only being done in Australia as part of 3 trials in Victoria. US DBS psychiatrist, Steven Rasmussen admits: “This really is a kind of mind control….”

Also highly controversial in the bill is allowing children of any age to consent to electroshock. Electroshock is the brutal application of hundreds of volts of electricity to the head potentially causing brain damage, memory loss and sometimes death. The consent and approval procedure is the same as for psychosurgery, no parental consent is required if it is decided the child has the capacity to consent.

A 2010 study involving a literature review by John Reed from the University of Auckland & Richard Bentall from Bangor University in Wales, found, “There are no placebo-controlled studies evaluating the hypothesis that ECT prevents suicide, and no robust evidence from other kinds of studies to support the hypothesis.” This includes a New Zealand Government report which found, “no definitive randomised evidence that ECT prevents suicide.”

In 2013 there were 18,803 electroshock treatments given in Victoria. A Freedom of Information Request revealed that in 2009/10, Victorian children aged 11-15 were given 49 electroshock treatments, 36 of them without parental consent being required. WA will at the very least be banning electroshock on children under 14.

The previous draft bill banned both psychosurgery and electroshock for use on children under 13. Both these proposals have been dropped along any fines and prison terms for performing both outside of the law, leaving psychiatry literally above the law. In addition, it is now proposed to call psychosurgery “neurosurgery,” which is an attempt to cover up the true nature of the practice.

Ms Wilkins Executive Director of the Australian National Office of the Citizens Committee on Human Rights says, “16 year olds can’t drink, drive or vote but psychiatrists will be able to decide if they have the capacity to consent to permanently damaging their brain. We do not live in the dark ages, children are not guinea pigs. All forms of psychosurgery including DBS must be completely banned. The use of electroshock on children also needs to be banned in Victoria. A parent’s’ right to protect their child is being demolished.”

CCHR was co-founded in 1969 by the Church of Scientology and Professor of Psychiatry Dr Thomas Szasz to investigate and expose psychiatric violations of human rights. Contact: Shelley Wilkins 02 99649844 or 0414724404